How to Do an Earth 101 (Or: Humans for Dummies)
by Irhaboggles
Summary: Trying to be human is hard, as Kara quickly comes to see. She does her best, but things always managed to go wrong for her somehow. Why are Earth customs so darn confusing?


Kara gave a cry of horror when she woke up one morning to find the bed beside hers totally empty, save for one large bloodstain right in the middle of the sheets. She shot up at once, wailing for Eliza and Jeremiah.

"Alex is gone! Alex is missing! And her bed is covered in blood! I think something terrible has happened to her!" but the young Kryptonian didn't get very far before Alex herself appeared in the hallway, scowling, arms crossed.

"Kara! Shut up! There's no need to be so loud so early in the morning!" she snapped as she stepped out of the bathroom.

"Alex? Thank Rao! You're ok!" Kara put a hand to her chest, heart pounding like a drum.

"Of course I'm ok, now what-?" Alex began to demand, still frowning deeply, but before she could finish asking, Eliza and Jeremiah arrived.

"What's wrong?!" they demanded. "What happened?!" their eyes darted back and forth between their two daughters and the younger one instantly wilted right before their very eyes.

"I-I-I thought something bad had happened to Alex," she admitted, twiddling her thumbs and staring hard at the floor in embarrassment.

"What ever made you think that?" Eliza and Jeremiah gave their new young foster daughter a perplexed look. Kara opened and closed her mouth a few times before she soundless gestured for all of them to follow her back into the bedroom. Once they arrived, she pointed to the large bloodstain on the bed. Alex instantly gave a moan, covering her face.

"Kara!" she complained, sounding angry, embarrassed and hurt all at once. Eliza and Jeremiah, meanwhile, both covered their mouths, eyes sparkling with amusement and embarrassment both. Kara, however, was still deeply confused.

"Alex was bleeding! She's hurt! Isn't something wrong?" she asked, eyes darting back and forth between the three Danvers standing in front of her. The smallest of the trio, Alex, still had her face buried in her hands and she was muttering about how embarrassed she was and how stupid Kara was. This stung Kara greatly, so she turned to her foster parents for understanding, but they were only giving her unreadable looks. She didn't understand. Why was no one panicking? Alex was bleeding! Wasn't she hurt?

"I'm going back to the bathroom!" Alex finally announced, removing her hands from her face to shoot Kara a death glare before stalking away, nose high. Kara watched her go in anger, hurt and confusion. Why was Alex being so mean to her? What had she done wrong?

Well, as Eliza later explained, this was something that all female humans got. It was called a "period" and it was part of the "menstrual cycle". Eliza explained it all to Kara, but it still made no sense to the young Kryptonian.

"What do the periods do? What are they for?" she asked Eliza.

"Whenever a female human's body is ready to procreate, it releases an egg from the ovaries and that egg travels down into the uterus, but if the egg isn't fertilized, then the body gets rid of it and that's what the period is. Essentially, it's the body's way of getting rid of an unfertilized egg, since that egg will never become a child without being fertilized," Eliza explained, feeling awkward and pitying both as she, essentially, had the Birds and Bees talk with her alien foster daughter. (Now there was something she never ever thought she'd do!)

These words swirled around in Kara's mind. Egg? Ovaries? Fertilized? Although a few of the things Eliza said made sense to her, quite a lot of it didn't. In her world, Kryptonians were born in labs. There was no real physical or sexual reproduction. It was all highly engineered. So the concept of a body giving birth was a strange one in her mind, and as far as she could recall, she'd never had a period before. And nor had any of her other female friends back on Krypton. She wondered, briefly, if being on Earth would eventually do that to her, cause her to start having periods. The thought scared her terribly.

"I don't want to wake up covered in blood! What if I lose too much?" she fretted and once again, Eliza was tasked with trying to calm her second child down, explaining to her that the body took care of all the grunt work. People didn't die of blood loss because of a period. And the conscious mind had no control over it, for better or for worse. Sure, the blood was annoying, gross and messy, but it wasn't dangerous.

"But it is painful!" Alex had grunted later on in the morning when they were all downstairs eating breakfast. "The cramps are terrible!"

"Cramps?" Kara quailed a little.

"Alex! Don't scare your sister," Jeremiah sighed as he helped his wife finish making breakfast.

"What? I'm just stating the facts," Alex huffed back. "Besides, we don't even know if she _will _get a period," the Danvers added, narrowing her eyes at Kara as if this lack of a period somehow made her an untrustworthy person. Kara wilted again. Rao, how she missed Krypton!

Kara would've given anything in all of space and time to go back! This place, this new world, Earth, was no home to her. And nor was the family who had take her in. It was clear that Eliza and Jeremiah were trying, but they just could not relate or connect to a Kryptonian! Especially not one who had been forced to live with them because her home planet had gone kaboom! So as hard as anyone tried, Kara never quite felt at home anywhere on this planet. And Alex's constant judgements were of no help either. It wasn't her fault didn't understand any of Earth's customs! She was trying, but it was all so new to her still, and she was still grieving the loss of her entire world.

But since Kara knew that she would be spending quite a lot of time with the Danvers, and Earth in general, she did try her very best to grow accustomed to the place. What other choice did she have? Unfortunately, sometimes, her best efforts still weren't enough…

_Beep! Beep! BEEEP! _Kara had been walking towards the fridge when a shrill beeping filled the air. In her fright, she whipped around at an impossibly fast speed and succeeded in yanking the fridge door clean off its hinges.

"Oh. Ooops," Kara wilted as she continued to stand there, holding the fridge door with one hand as she realized that the beeping noise had only been the microwave behind her. Alex had been in the kitchen at the time and her mouth and eyes went wide as she realized that Kara had managed to rip a fridge door right off the fridge itself, but then a second later, she heaved a massive sigh before facepalming.

"I-I I can fix this," Kara stuttered embarrassedly, awkwardly trying to fit the door back in place. She succeeded only in bending the hinges completely out of shape and breaking the door even more as she pushed too hard trying to fit it back inside the fridge. Alex heaved another sigh, face still buried in her hand as she listened to the grating sound of the door crushing in on itself.

And then another time, Kara had broken the TV remote and nearly broken the TV while trying to channel surf. She had stumbled upon the Jerry Springer and Maury shows at one point and had been both amazed and horrified to see just how vicious humans could really be. She'd seen people literally throwing themselves at each other in order to fight and it amazed her to think that the studio was always full of a live audience who adored watching the bloodbath go down. And not only that, but all the reasons the people found to fight were so confusing and complexing, like debates over who's child was who's, among other relationship-based issues. Were humans always this dramatic? This was why growing children in a lab was so much better. It was so much more practical and lot less messy and confusing…

"Oh my!" Kara cringed as one particularly violent punch from one person sent the other collapsing to the floor. The studio went wild. Kara finally decided that she'd had enough. She picked up the remote and pushed the button shaped like a triangle, pointing upward. It changed the channel. The next show was much better, but Kara suddenly found herself fascinated with the remote. Every button did something special and she, with it in her hand, decided to test it out and see everything it was capable of.

"Fascinating!" the girl mumbled as she began to experiment, pressing every button on the remote to see what it did. At one point, though, she accidentally switched it a bit too far and pressed too many buttons all at once. The TV suddenly switched over to a blank blue screen.

"Uh oh…" Kara cringed inwardly and tried to hit a few more buttons. Nothing. Ok. This was really not good! She began to panic, pushing the buttons even faster and harder. Before she knew it, then, half the buttons had been smashed deep into the remote and the remote itself had been twisted out of shape because of how hard Kara had been holding it. Uh oh…

"Kara? Is everything-?" Jeremiah had been in the next room over when he heard her panicked noises coming from the living room.

"Nothing!" she stood up swiftly and turned around just as fast. Her leg bumped into the little coffee table sitting only inches away from her and it went flying forward, narrowly missing the TV screen altogether. Kara wilted yet again. Uh oh. Jeremiah hadn't been mad at all, but Kara had still felt terrible for nearly breaking his TV and utterly annihilating the remote.

But it wasn't even just machines that Kara found perplexing. Human etiquette and all their tics and trends were far beyond her as well. School was where her ignorance was most obvious.

"Woah! Who is that?! What is that?! Why is everyone-?! What happened?!" Kara was all but piggyback riding Alex through the hallways of Midvale's junior high. It was towards the end of October and the poor young Kryptonian still had no concept of things like Halloween. As far as she was concerned, everyone had suddenly come dressed up as something weird, scary or crazy! This time, though, Alex only laughed to herself. She had intentionally not told Kara about Halloween for this very reason: she wanted to see the girl freak out when half of her fellow classmates suddenly looked like witches, wizards, zombies, skeletons, vampires, werewolves, kings, queens, robots and whatever else they could think of.

(Alex had obliged to tell her about Christmas, though, just because that was a bigger holiday. Though she had done her best to make it sound weird and creepy by referring to a strange and powerful being named Santa Clause who was watching everyone at all times and knew exactly how to sneak into their houses on Christmas night. Suffice to say, it had made Kara very paranoid and she had been confused as to why so many people seemed to like this mysterious man who could break into their houses in a snap).

But even non-holiday specific events confused her.

"What are they doing over there?" Kara and Alex had been leaving the school when Kara noticed the football team in the middle of practice.

"Football," Alex answered as they walked closer to the stadium where the practice was being held.

"Football?" Kara tilted her head in confusion.

"It's a sport," Alex explained.

"A sport?" Alex's answer had done nothing to assuage her confusion.

"A game," Alex heaved a sigh. This was like trying to teach things to a baby! And then she tried to give a quick overview of the game, the sport, to Kara. She seemed to catch on quickly enough, but it was still clear that she didn't quite get the point of it all.

"Sooo, you just have two teams running around in circles and smashing into each other to try and get that little brown… ball, and throw it into one of the two big prong-things at the end of the field?" she asked for clarification.

"Pretty much," Alex deadpanned.

"Well that seems pointless!" Kara remarked.

"It is," Alex couldn't help but smirk just a little. There was something she and her new sister could agree on…

"But why is it called football if they don't use their feet?" Kara asked next and Alex heaved another huge sigh. Oh great. More questions. "And why is it even called a ball? It's not spherical!" Kara asked next, sounding even more confused than before.

"Just go with it," Alex advised tiredly, and she began to lead Kara away from the stadium. It wasn't a very satisfying answer, but Kara could sense that Alex wasn't in the mood to explain anything else, so she decided to just roll with it.

Alex wasn't the only one who was faced with Kara's obvious obliviousness, though. Since school was one of the best places to see Kara's ignorance on display, a lot of her fellow classmates got to see just how strange she was as well. She wore the clothing that had been purchased for her, but she didn't understand Earthly fashion and the nuances and ever-changing nature of the latest fashion trend confused her.

"On Krypton, we did have outfits for every occasion, but they were always tunics and they were always relatively simple and unchanging," she had once whispered to Alex as a posse of young women went flaunting on by, each of them wearing yet another one of the world's latest fashion trends.

Additionally, on Krypton, since fashion was ruled by tradition, it was never too hard to figure people out based on their clothing. Or vice versa. But on Earth, people within the same classroom could wear vastly different outfits and no one would bat an eye. One person would be in a dress, one in a suit, one in a tee shirt and jeans, one in shorts, one in a tank top, one in pajamas (though Kara was pretty sure that was a mistake, and not intentional) and one in the same outfit that had been worn the previous day, and yet it was all treated as totally normal in this place.

There were no specific robes, tunics or uniforms for anyone and no one had any sort of familial wear. Back on Krypton, Kara had worn things passed down through the ages, and some of her fancier outfits had had the crest of the House of El on them. No one on Earth wore anything with their family names on it. There was no easy way to identify a person through their clothing.

"You're looking lovely today!" Alex greeted one of her friends politely as she, Kara and the rest of the class all sat down to lunch.

"Oh, thank you!" came the sweet reply. "You look nice today too!"

And this back and forth chatter carried on while Kara observed in silence, trying to figure out when and where she might practice her social skills and inject herself into the conversation. As she watched Alex so easily and smoothly navigate the dark waters of socializing, Kara felt a small rush of envy rise up in her chest. Alex made it look so easy to talk to other people. Why couldn't it be easy for Kara? She almost wished that Midvale could've had a class for this. She certainly could've used a "How to Do an Earth 101" or "Humans For Dummies". Alex had made that joke at Kara before, right after she'd laser-vision-ed the popcorn machine into oblivion after being frightened by it. That joke had been meant as a more mean-spirited retort, but Kara honestly agreed with it completely. She would've gladly taken a class or read a book on how to pass as human.

"Alright then, spill the beans!" Kara was brought back to attention by the sound of Alex grilling her friend for information about the latest gossip. Spill the beans? What the heck did that mean? They weren't having beans today! It was Hotdog Day! No amount of English classes could ever prepare her for the crazy slang that her fellow classmates used. And this problem would carry on throughout her life. She would never quite understand terms like YOLO, swag, yeet, mood, on fleek, thicc, snatched, high/lowkey, finna, thot or bae when those words came to pass either. And idioms like "penny for your thoughts" or "letting the cat out of the bag" had always confused her as well. Even once she had the definition down, the etymology behind them sometimes still perplexed her.

But Kara continued to listen quietly as Alex and her friend chatted back and forth, trying to study their habits and pick up on them so that she could eventually join them in their lighthearted banter. But if there was one thing that these humans teenagers seemed to like to talk about a lot, it was sex. Whether they were speculating or recounting and whether they were making jokes or trying to be serious (emphasis on "trying"), all of those words about human mating and breeding and all the associated body parts hung around the school like an ever-represent cloud.

In fact, that very day, Kara had heard at least three boys brag about having sex with some of the prettiest girls in class. And a whole bunch of other ones had spent the entirety of math class just making dirty jokes at one another and drawing things in their math books. And at that very moment, the "beans" that Alex had wanted her friend to spill seemed to pertain to that very thing. Apparently, there was a new boy in her friend's science class and Alex wanted to know every little detail about him.

"He's so hot, but he's also cute. He's got deep brown eyes and his hair just looks so soft and-" and both Alex and her friend began to swoon. Hmmm. Interesting. Well. That was a trend Kara was finally picking up on! Time to try out her new skills!

The next time there was a lull in the conversation, Kara finally steeled up her nerves and gave it a shot.

"Sooo… uhhh… sex is good, right?" she asked innocently. At first, she felt proud for finally speaking up and saying something, but the reactions she received quickly made her realize that even if sex was a popular topic of discussion, it was never addressed directly. Alex began to choke on her milk while her friend went bug-eyed and a few other people in the vicinity all whipped around to give Kara a good long look. Some looked stunned, some looked humored, some looked scandalized, some looked eerily interested and some just looked curious, like they wanted to know what on Earth had prompted such a remark. After seeing all of their faces, Kara began to wonder the same thing.

_Why is being human so hard? _She asked herself, clearing her throat and staring back down at her lunch tray in humiliation. _Why do none of these Earth trends and tics make any sense?! _And the rest of that lunch was incredibly quiet and awkward, especially for the two Danvers sisters.

"Kara! What the heck?!" Alex hissed the moment the two of them were out of the cafeteria.

"I don't know!" Kara answered with a defensive pout. "I thought you guys all liked talking about sex!"

"We do!" Alex cried in dismay. "But you can't go around calling it out like that!"

"Well what was I supposed to say?" Kara crossed her arms. "Why are you humans so vague?"

"SHHH!" Alex quickly put a finger to her lips and Kara swiftly realized her mistake as well. Never ever say "you humans" as if you weren't a human. That's the fastest way to fail at trying to do an Earth.

"Sorry," Kara finally had the grace to look genuinely apologetic and even Alex gave her new sister a sympathetic look.

"Look, I know adjusting is difficult, but come on!" she pleaded.

"I am, Alex! I am!" Kara pleaded right back. "I'm trying really hard, but I don't know what I'm doing! You need to help me! Please! I don't know how to be-!" she began, but she caught herself quickly. "I don't know how to adjust," she rephrased. She lowered her voice then. "Please Alex, please help me to be like you! Teach me how to be a human, because I can do this alone!"

Alex looked into Kara's wide, pleading eyes and heaved yet another massive sigh. As crazy as Kara drove her, Alex knew that she had a point. It really wasn't fair to expect Kara to self-teach herself all of Earth's ins and outs. Heaven knew Alex found navigating this crazy life confusing, and she had spent her entire life here! So how could she expect a newcomer like Kara to be able to figure it out? Especially so soon, and especially without help. So, it looked like the role of teacher fell onto Alex's shoulders, for better or for worse. So she agreed. She agreed to try and be a better sister and help Kara control herself a little more. It wasn't going to be easy on either of them, but what choice did they have?

As the two walked to their next class together, Kara was careful to keep her eyes straight ahead and try not to stare at anything for too long. She was also careful not to slam her locker door shut too hard. She had done that on the first day of school and she'd had a heck of a time trying to explain to the principal how a solid metal door could've bent in half so completely. Alex watched her the entire time, eyes like a hawk. Then once they got into their next classroom, Kara saw down delicately and made sure _not _to open her books and notes right away, lest she look like a "nerd", whatever that was. It was another word that no one had taught her yet, but experience seemed to say that it was someone who was too fast at learning. Kara didn't want anyone to catch onto her super speed so she left her books shut for the time being. She slumped back into her chair and pretended to be distracted by a loose piece of string on the hem of her shirt.

"Good," Alex whispered in her ear, having observed every last movement Kara had made since they left the cafeteria. "You're learning."

"I am?" Kara asked hopefully, but then she quickly cleared her throat and tried to look relaxed almost to the point of boredom again. "I mean, yeah, I know, I got it," she tried to sound a little less eager. This earned the barest of smiles from Alex, a rare and wonderful sight indeed.

"Maybe you're a better learner than I thought," Alex whispered. "Maybe you'll be better at being human than any us know…" but before Alex could say more, the bell to start class rang out. Everyone turned around as the teacher walked into the room.

But even though Kara's little chat with Alex was over, the afterglow of it was still there. She had to hide a smile behind her hand, pretending to yawn instead of grin like a fool.

"_Maybe you're a better learner than I thought… Maybe you'll be better at being human than any us know…_" the words echoed like the sweetest of music in Kara's ears and she felt her heart pounding with pride.

"I did it!" she whispered softly to herself. "I did an Earth! Look out everyone, because Kara Danvers just did an Earth!" and that incredibly pleased smile remained on her face for the entire rest of class.

**AN: Here you go, ****PockyGirl of the Phoenix Souls****, here's your "Kara tries to learn Earth customs" fic. Hope you liked it!**


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